Private views and observations on physics, society and
life in general

Friday, May 16, 2008

Exhibition at EPFL on Women in Science

An old friend from Delaware who is now a professor here at EPLF is Thomas Henzinger. I heard from our friend Rajagopal that he is here and so I moseyed down to his office to see him. I found an exhibition on `Women in Science' going on there. The web-site (alas, only in French) is here.

Most of the ones I expected were featured there. All the women Nobel laureates were there. The near misses, Jocelyn Bell, Rosalind Franklin were also featured. Frances Allen, famous computer scientist was also featured. Curiously, astronauts such as Valentina Tereshkova were also featured. From earlier times, there were Ada Byron and the mathematician Sophie Germaine. I did not notice Julia Robinson. There was a Japanese scientist as well. I must confess that I am not an expert on the subject, but I did not find anything very surprising. No particle physicists (boo! hoo!). No one from India. Maybe in India someone should organize an exhibition like this?